A journey of learning - The story of Zahra Nader

Zahra Nader is an Afghan Canadian journalist and PhD student in gender, feminist and women’s studies at York University in Toronto. As the editor-in-chief of Zan Times (or “Women Times”), she is driven to tell the stories of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable people.

Being a visible minority—Hazara—meant that Zahra faced constant discrimination and violence growing up. When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, her family found safety in Iran. Zahra was young and passionate about learning, but her right to go to school was taken away.

“For my entire childhood, I longed for the education that I couldn’t get in Iran,” she says.

After the collapse of the Taliban regime in 2001, Zahra’s family returned to Afghanistan. While they lived in poverty and faced many difficulties rebuilding their lives, Zahra was delighted to finally start school.

“The school I attended wasn’t a school. It was a tent. But I was happy to be able to attend any school and to have the right to an education,” says Zahra.

After finishing high school, Zahra earned a bachelor’s degree in law before pursuing a journalism career to support her dream of being a women’s rights advocate. She started her journalism career in 2011, and in 2016, she earned a position at the New York Times bureau in Kabul. Shortly after that, she moved to Canada. Here, she has made the best of educational and growth opportunities that always felt out of her reach growing up.

The fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021 triggered dark memories of the past for Zahra, and she feared for the safety of family and friends who remained in the country. While she was relieved when her parents and siblings joined her in Toronto in June 2022, she continued to search for ways to help the many others still suffering under the Taliban regime.

In August 2022, she worked with a group of Afghan women journalists to launch Zan Times, a non-profit newsroom that reports on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, with a focus on women, the 2SLGBTQI+ community, and environmental issues. Later that same year, she briefed the United Nations Security Council on women’s security issues, bringing attention to the silenced voices of Afghan women. She remains optimistic that she will be able to go back to Afghanistan one day to teach gender and women’s studies.

“No one wants to leave their country unless they are forced,” Zahra says, stressing the importance of the support offered to refugee newcomers. “People come here broken and shattered with hopes for a better future. The kindness they experience really matters in shaping their future in Canada.”